MATCH PREVIEW: BRENTFORD V WOLVES

The last Premier League game before the October international break will take place on Saturday at Gtech Community Stadium, where Brentford will host Wolverhampton Wanderers at 3 p.m.

In an attempt to maintain their perfect home record in the 2024–25 Premier League season, Brentford takes on Wolves this weekend at Gtech Community Stadium.

The Bees’ opening set of six games included trips to Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, and Liverpool. Despite this difficult schedule, the team made it to all three games, winning the first goal of the season at both City and Spurs and using the advantage of home field to win the remaining three.

With such a difficult stretch of road games ahead of you, it’s critical to accumulate points and put them on the board in all of your “other games,” and Thomas Frank’s team has done just that so far.

Like last season, the Bees have so far this season underperformed their projected goals by 0.52 over the course of six games, but it will actually instill confidence in them that, despite their continued success and point accumulation, the best is yet to come.

Frank will be concerned by the fact that they have given up nine goals but their expected goals against have been far higher—12.72%. But thus early in the season, with such a small sample size.

Wolverhampton Wanderers, on the other hand, have given up the most goals in the Premier League thus far this season (16 allowed against just 11.4 predicted), and they have also faced some difficult opponents to begin the season.

Given that it could be a rather low-scoring game, this one might actually go against the trend. But thanks to Bryan Mbeumo, who is currently Brentford’s most productive Premier League player ever in terms of direct goal involvements, home field advantage, and an overall improvement in the Bees’ play from the previous season, there’s reason to believe that the west Londoners will be happy with their work going into the October international break.

Both sides agreed to the Spaniard’s departure from Molineux because apparent differences off the field had become too much for them to handle.

After leaving Bournemouth abruptly himself, Gary O’Neil took over as manager. O’Neil was a strong candidate to succeed the former Real Madrid and Spain manager because of his firefighting skills at Vitality Stadium, where the Cherries avoided relegation despite losing their first game of the season 9-0 and finishing five points above the drop zone.

It would have been unreasonable to criticize him too harshly after Wolves lost four of their opening five league games given the short turnaround time and high-profile sales of Rúben Neves and Matheus Nunes.

On the whole, 2023/24 was a successful season. Not quite as gripping as the club’s first two back in the top flight under Nuno Espírito Santo, but solid – not least as, for only the second time, they reached the 50-goal mark in a single Premier League season. They reached the quarter-final of the FA Cup for the second time in six seasons, too.

O’Neil was seen to have done such a terrific job at stabilising things that he was handed a new four-year contract, along with his assistant Tim Jenkins, coaches Shaun Derry and Ian Burchnall, head of goalkeeping Neil Cutler and analyst Woody Dewar.

“He works very hard and is very humble,” said chair Jeff Shi. “He might be the humblest manager I have ever worked with and one of the most hard-working coaches I’ve ever met. His strengths are around his tactics and his chemistry with the players.” It was a most welcome show of faith.

Wolves brought in transfer fees of around £100 million in the summer, most of which came from the big-money sales of Max Kilman to West Ham and Pedro Neto to Chelsea, and made a healthy £40 million profit after making signings of their own.

That is about as positive as it has got for them so far this term, though.

O’Neil’s side lost 2-0 at Arsenal on the opening weekend and it was 2-2 at half-time when they faced Chelsea in their first home league game the following week. After a second-half collapse – which facilitated a 14-minute hat-trick for Noni Madueke – they eventually lost 6-2.

“I didn’t see the second half coming,” said O’Neil. “We know how brutal the Premier League can be if you drop your guard slightly. It’s a big week for myself, the players and the football club to get as much right in the next week as we can.”

To be fair, they did—they had their first point of the season after a 1-1 draw with Nottingham Forest after defeating Burnley in the Carabao Cup second round. But they haven’t won since. After four losses, they are eliminated from the cup and at the bottom of the Premier League standings.

Although Wolves’ Expected Goals Against total is 11.4 goals, they actually have the league’s leakiest defense, having allowed 16 goals in six games. Their Expected Points total is 5.13, 4.13 greater than their Actual Points total of 1.

Taking into account the conclusion of the previous campaign, Wolves have taken home six of the 45 points available in their previous 15 league games while losing 11 of them.

Read more news on https://sportupdates.co.uk/